Bigfoot strikes again!
And this time he’s better, stonger, faster. You better read it for yourself. But if the concept of a "new and better Bigfoot" doesn’t scare the hell out of you, well then thank you for visiting my blog Mr. Majors.
It’s the end of the world as we know it
I, for one, feel fine, but a whole lot of anti-LHC cranks are suddenly trickling out of the woodwork. Some people get really worked up over that whole precautionary principle thing — well, you can’t prove that the LHC won’t destroy the world, so it’s best to assume that it will. And it will probably do it by some means combining the best features of quantum physics, voodoo, and silver-age comic book science.
Bob Park hit the nail pretty much on the head here when he wrote: "In 1999 Wagner warned that RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, must be slain lest it create a black hole (WN 23 Jul 99) . The then BNL director, Jack Marburger, named a distinguished panel of physicists to investigate. Their report noted that nature has been conducting the relevant safety test for billions of years by colliding heavy-ion cosmic rays with the moon. It concluded that creation of a black hole is ‘effectively ruled out by the persistence of the Moon.’"
Secret project: Skills and Spells
Say you’re chopping some type of mob, and you want to do something other than ordinary old chop-chop-chop with your giant monster-chopping flamberge. What do you do? Well, if you’re playing Final Fantasy VIII, you select the GF command over and over and over. But in my game, should you happen to point your magical wiimote targeting cursor at something and chop the B button, a few things will happen. First off, the action will pause; since you won’t be able to act for the next few seconds, it seemed only fair that the mobs would suffer the same limitation. The more interesting component of the process is that a radial menu will open around your target.
I know what you’re thinking — holy shit yes, a menu! But it’s more exciting even than that makes it sound. From this menu you’ll be able to select (also via Wii remote pointage) the skill you want to use, and then use it! What are skills, you ask, not unreasonably? Skills are special combat abilities you’ll gain as you level up, and they can and do vary by character. In case you missed it, I just subtly revealed that there are multiple playable characters available in this game — that’s just how completely freakin’ crazy I am. That’s like an extra bonus update.
So what about spells? No, spells aren’t just what we call skills when your character is wearing a dress instead of armour. They’re a totally seperate mechanic, but they’re accessed through the same means; the nunchuck stick can switch you from the radial skills menu to the radial spells menu. The exact mechanical differences between the two will be the subject of a later post; for now, suffice to say that there are non-trivial differences.
Once you’ve selected your skill or spell, well, that’s about all there is to it. Recall that through the magic of the Wii remote’s pointer functionality you’ve already chosen your target and the whole thing becomes clear; your skill or spell executes targeted on whatever you were pointing at (also what the menu opened around). If that target’s out of range? No worries — that skill or spell will be "redded out" and unavailable. No problems with accidentally wasting something or any confusion about whether or not you can use it. Just a fluid skill-usage system designed to reduce the time you spend playing with menus and get you back to the choppin’!
Cavemen: 2, Fifteen-month-old Girl: 0
More murder by ignorance. Seriously, how can people living in the United States in the twenty-first century be this stupid?
Sony: pwnt
My, my. Looks like Sony’s been pirating the software that runs its infrastructure. Yes, the same Sony that once installed rootkits on its customers’ computers to try to control piracy — excusing this with the un-live-downable quote "Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" — apparently doesn’t think twice about infringing anybody else’s copyright.
So Sony treats both its customers and its business partners like shit. Good work, gentlemen!
Secret project: Controls
When designing a video game, it’s always important to bear in mind that players will be interacting with it, and make sure you don’t make that a game that sure looks like it would be fun if only it were playable (Editor’s note: a 7.0 on Gamespot is roughly equivalent to my rating of 1.5). So while designing my game, I’ve tried to keep in mind how players will play it and make sure I’m not expecting them to jump through any extraordinary hoops just to hit an orc with a damn sword.
At present, I’m planning my control scheme around the Wii remote and nunchuck, because I have to design it for something and that offers the exact functionality I have in mind. The main feature of peculiar Wii-ness that I’m using for the game is the pointer; as such, it would be relatively straightforward to redesign / port for the DS or the PC, and only marginally more difficult for a platform without a pointing device, though I think the game would be ideal as a Wii Ware title. At present, I’m planning to use the pointer, the analogue stick, and the A, B, C, Z, +, and – buttons. That may seem like a lot of buttons, but I think the use of them will be simple enough as not to cause trouble.
The control stick is used for primary movement. 360-degree movement is possible, terrain permitting, and various levels of pressure will vary movement speed.
The pointer is used for targeting and menu selection. If the pointer is not pointed at the screen the game will continue to function, but any actions requiring a target won’t really accomplish anything until you point the damn thing where it should be.
The A button is the primary input button, and is the button that will be pressed most often. A is the button you want to use to talk to people, to read things, to open things, to pick things up, and to attack. It’s also the button of choice for confirming menu selections.
The B button is for using skills and spells, and for cancelling menus.
The C button is for jumping.
The Z button is for defending.
The + and – buttons both pause the game; both buttons share the same function in order to accommodate people holding the remote in either hand.
So as you can see, it involves several buttons, but most of the game’s button-work is done on just one of them (A). This seems to me to be a fairly simple but still full-featured control scheme, and we’ll be taking advantage of the Wii remote’s pointer functionality to allow some pretty cool interaction. But that’s a tale for another day; I’ve run on long enough for now. Be with us next time when we’ll discuss skills and spells!
Soup series 1: Tomato blue cheese
My soups are developing a bit of a cult following lately, which came as quite the surprise to me, let me just tell you. One of my most popular soups is tomato blue cheese, which (for various reasons) I make only a few times a year, when the stars are all in alignment. It is highly-anticipated and there is much celebration when I finally roll it. But despite all that, it’s startlingly easy to make — so much so that I always feel like I’m cheating. As with all of my soups, I generally make this about two gallons at a time; I’ll do my best to scale it down for home use, but several bits may be left as an exercise for the reader.
It begins, as do so many soups, with onions and garlic. You’re looking for a fine chop on the onion and a mince on the garlic — don’t purée it, fod pity’s sake. A good-sized home batch probably uses about one medium-sized yellow onion (spanish or vidalia) and half a bulb of garlic. Once they’re chopped, melt some butter in the pot you intend to use (it’s a one-pot soup, so this will look a bit foolish at first, with just the onions and garlic), and put the vegetables in to soften. Next you add the tomatoes — the best thing about tomato soups is that canned tomatoes are actually excellent for the purpose, so there’s no need to peel the goddamn things. What you’ll want here is about six cups of "peeled ground" tomatoes; other tomato products can be used if you want your soup chunkier or thinner (I don’t advise going thinner myself, but it will probably work going all the way down to tomato juice if that’s your thing. But your mileage may vary and all that). Once that’s added, let it heat over medium flame until it’s just beginning to steam (don’t boil it), and then add one quart of heavy cream. Pour the cream in slowly and whisk until it’s combined and it shouldn’t break; what to do if it does is beyond the scope of this article, but it’s something I’ll address shortly.
Once your soup is creamed you’re going to want to heat it slowly back up, stirring frequently. Again, make sure it doesn’t boil. As it heats, add salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and tabasco to taste — the tabasco is mainly for sympathetic flavour with the cream and cheese, and isn’t actually for making the soup spicy; if you’ve seasoned it properly, it shouldn’t have any heat to it at all. Since probably nobody knows what I’m talking about here, let’s just call it a teaspoon of tabasco and get on with it, yes? Yes. Good. Once the soup is hot again, you’ll add the cheese. Cheesey cheese. Yum. You’ll want a crumbled blue cheese of moderate quality for this; don’t get anything foolishly expensive and then melt it in the damn soup, but don’t get the blue-cap Easy Cheese and expect it to be awesome. Use your best judgment here. Regardless, add about a cup and a half of crumbles, stir until they’re melted in (you won’t see white bits floating in it anymore), and taste it. If it doesn’t have enough blue cheese "tang" to it, add a bit more. Once you’re happy with the cheesiness, hey, you’re done! It’s best to let this soup age for a half-hour or so on very low heat before eating it, but, hell, if you don’t want to wait it’ll be fine right out of the pot.
Variations:
The only major variation on this soup I tend to make involves adding mushrooms. For this much soup you’ll want about two quarts of raw, sliced mushrooms (whites or criminis should both work fine; if you want something more outré, hey, it’s your soup) added in with the onions and garlic at the beginning. And of course instead of just softening the vegetables you’ll want to let them sizzle until the mushrooms have stopped releasing liquid.
Welcome to the projects
Now I feel like a rapper. Excellent.
I’m using this category to discuss — nay, rap about — my pending game design project. Sure, maybe I’ll never get the damn thing developed and published, but game design is my passion. It’s what I do, and I’m doing it whether or not it’ll ever see the light of day. But game design isn’t something that can be kept to oneself — games, like all art, are to be shared. So if I can’t turn my design into a living, breathing game, I can at least turn it into a series of dull-ass blog posts. And who knows, maybe an anonymous internet billionaire will see this blog, become enthralled with it, and offer to finance the development before heading to his top-secret subterranean crime-fighting lair. Maybe I can even get his autograph!
Oh, note that these are blog posts, and will be written conversationally and probably with both jokes and swear words. I’m under no misconception that this is an actual proper design document, and you shouldn’t be either. Unless you’ll pay me, in which case feel free.
The game I’m working on is a dungeon-crawl-type action game; the closest analogue I’m thinking of is The Legend of Zelda. I’m presently envisioning an isometric style; this is largely because I’m trying to be bounded and realistic and assuming that I shouldn’t go for full 3D in my first-ever effort, especially if I’m hoping to find a handful of interested parties and go forward with this. Ideally, I’m looking for the game to play primarily in two dimensions (XY), but with limited interactivity in the third dimension (Z), such as ledges and staircases and pits and such. There is an overworld, which is a bounded section of a larger world (room for expansion / sequels); the plan at present is to treat the overworld as a "level select" screen rather than having free roaming, thereby reducing backtracking, since the game is structured as a series of "missions" involving going to a remote location, performing a task, and returning to base.
The base of operations for the players is located in a typical video game hub city, complete with shops and NPCs to talk to and whatnot. The players will spend some time in town gathering supplies and information, and then locate "questgiver" NPCs with major quests for them. Once they receive a major quest for a particular dungeon, other NPCs may have minor quests for that dungeon that offer extra rewards. To avoid the problem of having to talk to every NPC over and over again hunting for quests, we’ll implement a system like the "question marks" in World of Warcraft to indicate which NPCs have a quest you can pick up, and which will have a quest to give you once you’ve found the requisite dungeon. Once the players are done in town, they head out to the map, choose the dungeon to head to, and get started spelunking.
Play in the dungeon primarily involves making it past obstacles, traps, and monsters to acheive the goal set out in the quest. On the way there may be placed treasures to find in hard-to-reach places, in addition to treasure drops from mobs and (of course) the rewards for completing quests. I’m thinking of a mob loot system similar to that used in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, where there will be a pool of "common drops" (simple things like health restores or small amounts of money) that can drop from any mob and drop rather frequently, along with more interesting (and less common) drops that are per-mob. It is of course important that the game furnishes sufficient fixed loot and quest rewards that it can be completed without necessitating the "farming" of mobs for certain items, but beyond that, hey, treasure is fun.
That’s the broad overview; I have a lot more designed and ready to talk about, but I don’t want to blow my whole load on one epic 30,000-word blog post. Please, if you’re interested in reading more about this, let me know in the comments. And if you have any questions aboud anything, by all means ask. I’d love to talk about it.
Next time, assuming I don’t get any particular requests that need to be addressed first, I plan to talk a bit about the mechanics and controls. Stay tuned!
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